A Polymarket executive believes Kalshi is spying on its prediction market rival, according to a New York Post report.
Key Takeaways
- Polymarket has kept a dossier of alleged suspicious activity involving Kalshi.
- Venture capital Paradigm is one of the theories behind the spying.
- Kalshi has denied copying Polymarket’s campaigns and strategies.
The global trading exchange founded by Shayne Coplan has an entire dossier dedicated to instances in which the company believes Kalshi copied its ideas, including competing New York grocery store promotions from earlier this year.
Enjoying Covers content? Add us as a preferred source on your Google account“There have been too many coincidences,” Matthew Modabber, Polymarket’s Chief Marketing Officer, told the New York Post. “There is bad intention in how they copy us. They’re breathing down our neck.”
Denial of espionage
Other sources inside Polymarket told the news outlet that there could be Kalshi moles planted inside the trading exchange’s New York office, which is located across the street from Paradigm. This venture capital firm has invested in Kalshi.
Polymarket has tinted its windows in recent months, reportedly out of concern that Paradigm was potentially viewing the trading exchange’s computer screens from afar on Kalshi’s behalf.
Both Kalshi and Paradigm executives denied accusations of espionage.
“This is sad and borderline delusional,” Kalshi spokesperson Jack Such told The Post. “Polymarket is welcome to waste its time investigating. While they do that, we’ll keep building.”
Open discussions
But Polymarket employees have kept a file dedicated to numerous suspicious activities, including screenshots of social media ads, app designs, and announcements, that make up just “one-tenth” of alleged copying, a Polymarket executive said to The Post.
Other employees have openly talked about concerning coincidences.
“We got together and discussed, like, ‘Is this possible?’” a Polymarket insider said about the spying. The group said that with Kalshi, “it is,” according to the Post’s source.
Polymarket’s allegations
One of Polymarket’s points of proof came in February when the company decided to offer 300 customers free groceries in a Manhattan neighborhood. Nine days before the event, Kalshi launched its own grocery campaign, handing out $50 vouchers and promoting a prediction market on the price of eggs rising at a New York City market.
A Polymarket source told The Post that Kalshi intended to “dilute” Polymarket’s campaign, an event that was “very meaningful” to Coplan, who grew up in New York.
Elizabeth Diana, Kalshi’s head of information, told The Post that the trading exchange had been working on their grocery promotion for a long time and didn’t copy anything from Polymarket for the event.
Polymarket sources also raised concerns over perpetual trading, which the company was going to launch on April 21. An hour before the product was going to go live, a story emerged that Kalshi was reportedly starting its own trading on “perps.”
“They seemed to know we were going to announce that day,” an insider said. “To us, the timing was pretty suspicious.”
Rivalry born
Polymarket began offering cryptocurrency-based prediction markets in 2020, but the company left the U.S. in 2022 because of regulatory issues. Kalshi received a court order before the 2024 Presidential Election to offer political contracts, setting prediction markets on fire.
With the backing of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the explosion of prediction markets across the U.S., Polymarket relaunched its app in America in December 2025 after acquiring a regulated derivatives trading company.
By then, Kalshi had already established itself as the top prediction market in the U.S., and a rivalry was born. Kalshi doubled its valuation in March after receiving a $1 billion round of funding. Polymarket’s worth is projected to be around $15 million.
In other prediction market news, there have been multiple instances of insider information trading on Polymarket.
